


you're the inspiration

by rhapsodyinpink



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: F/F, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, School Reunion, the other characters will make cameos too!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhapsodyinpink/pseuds/rhapsodyinpink
Summary: Although Aster and Ellie promise to meet again in a few years, time flies by when you're busy figuring out how to turn your life into a series of bold strokes, and it's easy for promises to fade into little more than beautiful memories.Ten years later, they finally reconnect at their ten year high school reunion.
Relationships: Aster Flores & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 42
Kudos: 265





	1. Aster

Declarations are easy to make to someone else when you’re seventeen years old and headed in opposite directions. So you’re not thinking that hard when you say you’ll see her in a few years and that you’ll be _so sure_ — so sure of who you are and what you want that no one will dare to question you. 

You tell her you hope that she’ll find something nice to believe in, but you would be lying if you didn’t secretly hope that you will too. 

And you don’t forget. Because it’s not enough to live a good life anymore; you don’t want to settle for anything less than great, even though you realized as soon as she left and your lips were still buzzing from her kiss that finding out what great means for you might take more than the few years you said it would to figure things out. 

Still, with each year that passes, you make sure to paint a bold new stroke on the canvas of your life, something that will take you closer to who you want to be, who you _know_ you can be. 

But time marches to its own beat. It turns out that figuring out who you are and what you want takes a lot of focus, so while you are busy learning how to paint boldy, it passes more quickly than you could have ever imagined. 

A few years turns into five, and then some. And now, close to the ten year mark, Ellie Chu almost feels like she was a figment of your imagination, though the growing popularity of her acoustic music on Spotify and the occasional messages you still get from Paul prove otherwise. 

Sometimes he asks if the two of you have reconnected yet. Sometimes you wonder how much she told him, how much he knows about everything that happened that wasn’t in the letters. The hot spring. The kiss. 

The promise. 

It’s funny how hard it is to remember now, what was real and what was imagined after you started unweaving the clouds of uncertainty covering the emotions you felt all along and started understanding who you were and what you wanted. 

In the process of unlearning who people thought you were and discovering yourself, you spent so much time thinking and ruminating on that confusing, feverish, beautiful senior spring that the thoughts and the memories have begun to blur together. 

And as beautiful as it all was, who you were, and who you are now, are two different people. 

You’re sure she’s different too. 

So you can’t help but wonder if it’s a good idea to see her at all. The beauty of time is that it has a way of painting rosy hues onto things that aren’t really as beautiful as they appear in the rearview mirror, and the fear of disappointment. 

When you left and went in opposite directions, it was with the hope that you would both find the missing pieces— something to believe in, someone to become. But hope only works because it requires a faith in the unknown; the belief that uncertainty will lead you to a better future than your present, to find the courage to paint the boldest strokes. 

But what if that spring was your perfect painting, and meeting again will be the extra stroke that ruins the whole thing? What if it’s best to let a perfect memory stay that way? 

And then it comes: an Evite invitation to your ten year high school reunion. 

You can’t help but scan the list of RSVPs, searching for her name.

And there it is; a green checkmark, right next to Ellie Chu, in bold black letters. 

You think about going; you reconsider. 

And then, a text from Paul: “Are you gonna come?” 

Her voice plays in your head. 

_“Is that_ **_really_ ** _your boldest stroke?”_

And you know in your heart that it’s not. 

So you say yes after all. 


	2. Paul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul's perspective on life after graduation.

Six months after graduation, a reporter from The Seattle Times emails you and asks you if you’d be open to being profiled for their new column about young culinary entrepreneurs. You wonder if it’s Ellie’s doing again, but it seems unlikely; she’s two thousand miles away in Iowa. 

Still, it makes you think of her, so you send her a surprise care package of Yakult and share the good news with Mr. Chu during your next weekly visit. 

You visit him a couple times a week, keeping good on your promise. It’s a nice change of pace from your rambunctious family and from the growing publicity that has unexpectedly started becoming a bigger part of your job, despite the fact that words were never your forte. 

Here too, Ellie helps, looking up books on marketing and PR at the Squahamish library and assigning you homework all the way from Iowa, with the help of her suitemate Rachel (and possibly more, you suspect sometimes), who is an econ major. The books aren’t as difficult as the books you had to read when you were trying to catch up to Aster, but applying the lessons prove to be as challenging as trying to talk to her on a date used to be. 

Luckily, it’s gotten easier to talk to Aster. It takes her a year to get into art school; during her gap year, both of you spend a lot of time at the library; it’s a quiet space for her to work on her portfolio, while you become a pro at marketing with the help of Advertising for Dummies and Aster as a surprisingly patient study buddy.

In between the study sessions, you talk about other things. Sometimes, you talk about God. Sometimes you talk about Trig. Sometimes you talk about the books you pretended to read earlier and actually read now. But you never talk about Ellie. 

You still feel bad about what happened, but it’s mixed with gratitude. If it weren’t for the letters, you wouldn’t be friends with either Aster or Ellie, and your taco sausages probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. Things happen, you think, for a reason, even if they don’t always seem that way at the time. 

Ellie never mentions Aster in her texts or emails either, but that’s less surprising. She’s figuring out what kind of person she wants to be, and you know that she’s probably throwing all of her effort into looking towards the future instead of looking backward, and at least for the first two years after graduation, that includes an internship in Chicago and a girlfriend named Rachel (she admits your suspicions were right during Thanksgiving break, freshman year, after you point out how much she talks about her). 

Everyone else looks to the future too, even if they don’t go as far away as Ellie did. 

Trig is unsurprisingly resilient. After Aster finally gets into art school and leaves behind Squahamish and a very confused parish, he dives right into the rock band lifestyle, with groupies and a whole setlist of classic rock band covers. The band slowly starts to gain traction throughout Western Washington, and when you tell Ellie about it, she suggests that you should reach out to Trig and offer to become their first official sponsor. 

It’s only after you send her a picture of their first successful gig sponsored by Munsky’s Sausages and she sends you a text with what is, for her, an astonishing number of emojis and exclamation points, that you realize she had been joking. 

Still, she’s proud that you managed to apply the skills you learned from those books on a professional level, and you sign up for an online business class at Western Washington University to learn even more. 

Aster’s proud too, and she puts you in touch with Eliza, one of her art school friends, who’s a whiz at graphic design and something called brand identity. Eliza hears you talk about Munsky’s Sausages and turns your words into a story that eventually resonates with the angel investors who decide to put their faith in you, and before you know it, there are multiple Munsky’s Sausages across the state. 

~~~

Five years on, your world has expanded far beyond Squahamish. 

While Ellie stays in Chicago for grad school, Aster lands in Seattle. 

When you log into the Linkedin profile Ellie made you create and see that Aster updated her Linkedin, listing her employer as Microsoft, you’re surprised, but you figure she has a reason, and you text her for the first time in a while, asking if she wants to catch up next time you’re up in Redmond, where you have a franchise opening up. 

“It’s just a day job,” she says over coffee, a few weeks later. “On the weekends, I have space at a studio and I’m working on the last few pieces for my first exhibition.” 

“That’s great,” you say. She looks happy too, and just as beautiful as ever, but you don’t mention that part, because some things are better left unsaid. 

Silence; and then your phone buzzes with a text from Ellie. 

Aster notices. “Do you talk to each other a lot?” she ventures, and you nod. 

“Yeah, I do. Do you talk to her much?” you ask her as well, even though to be honest, you know the answer. Ellie is still a sore point. 

Aster grips the edge of the table and looks away, and it reminds you of how Ellie avoids answering questions she doesn’t want to face the answer to, so you’re not surprised when she says no. 

~~~

Nine years on, your world contracts a little bit. Now that Munsky's Sausages is a bigger operation, you have a team in place to help with the details so you can allow yourself to get back to basics and get back to trying new recipes. As much as you've learned traveling to larger towns and big cities, there's no place like home, even though it's a little lonelier now that even Mr. Chu isn't there, having moved in with Ellie in Chicago.

Still, you understand why he made the move. When it became clear Ellie was never going to come back out west, she wasn't going to leave her dad alone in Squahamish. 

It turns out you have enough money to buy their apartment outright, so even though your family doesn't understand why, you put down the deposit and the Chus' former apartment becomes your personal office. You take care to use the kitchen space and the living room space only, keeping the bedrooms empty just in case Ellie and Mr. Chu ever decide to visit again and need a place to stay. 

Six months later, that opportunity finally comes. Half an hour after you receive an evite to your ten year high school reunion, you get a text from Ellie while you're standing in the kitchen experimenting with incorporating broad bean chili paste into one of your latest taco sausage combos. 

She's coming back for the reunion and needs a place to stay. 

Luckily, you just bought new sheets and pillows at the Target that opened in downtown Squahamish on a whim last time you went there with your sisters, so you're ready for her. 

You walk into the bedroom and walk around, doing inventory on what else she might need. Towels are in the closet; she's probably bringing a toothbrush and paste with her, so you won't need that. You imagine she's gotten better at handling hangovers, but you pop some ibuprofen into the chest by the bed anyway. 

You sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the opposite wall, where you have hung a painting of the sea that Aster gave you as a present a few years ago. 

And then it occurs to you that it might be time to close the loop between the three of you. Aster should come to the reunion too. 

So you pick up the phone and text her. 

An hour later, while you're in the middle of your next experiment, her response finally comes: 

**Yes.**


	3. Ellie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie's lived for ten years without looking back. But now the past is in front of her and she has to confront it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been months since I've had inspiration to work on this and I really thought it would just be 3 parts - but as inspiration would have it, I think it's going to end up being 4. Sorry for the additional wait- but I hope you enjoy!

When you leave Squahamish for the last time, it’s early November, your father is sitting across from you on the train and you have a cooler filled to the brim with Paul’s newest inventions — a whole range of turkey sausages — sitting between you. You’re both prepared for what has become a regular ritual and wave out the window as you pull away from the station, laughing as Paul jogs to keep up. He looks so goofy in his turkey hat and ugly brown turkey sweater that you’re completely distracted from the fact that you’re leaving forever until he’s nothing more than a waving pin prick in the distance and it hits you like a shot, sudden and sharp. 

But you stopped looking backward a long time ago. You spent so much time dreaming about the future that as soon as you got the chance to live a different life you dove right in, like a caged bird set free. There’s nothing left for you in Squahamish and you figured out a long time ago that your connection with Paul will always transcend any geographic distance. Still, when you find out that he bought your old apartment, it fills you with a certain sense of security that is unfamiliar, but welcome. Strong roots are not something you grew up with; and knowing that he bought this place, and that he will respect it and its history grounds you in a way you never expected. 

And life is unexpected. When everything is changing so much and at the same time, it’s easy to forget who you were, especially as the discoveries you make about yourself graft themselves onto your skin and eventually turn you into someone entirely new. 

Still — through it all — you keep track of Aster through the years. Because of course you keep track of her. 

Through Paul, you find out that she finally got into art school, and with his help, you create a secret Instagram just so you can follow her art journey. After graduation, you stalk her Linkedin on incognito tabs so she doesn’t notice. In the pictures she posts, you notice how the uncertainty in her eyes that you teased her for slowly gets replaced by a self-assuredness that is both beautiful and foreign; it makes her both familiar and a stranger at the same time, and though you would never admit it to anyone, a little intimidating as well. You subconsciously compare every girl you date to her and you get disappointed every time they don’t measure up, and so you’re perpetually single, because they can’t give you what you’re looking for, and never will.

She keeps track of you, too; you wonder if she knows that Spotify artists can see when people add their music to playlists, because even though her real name isn’t anywhere to be seen — you know there’s no one else who would title a playlist that contains your mellow acoustic songs something like Bold Strokes. 

And yet; you never reached back out. The strictest definition of “a couple” is two, but both of you knew that you didn’t really mean it. Two years is nothing; nobody changes that much in such a short amount of time, and so you thought it would make more sense to wait a little longer, to give her a chance to find herself more fully. But after eight years have passed, and you and your dad have left Squahamish and all its memories behind permanently, you wonder if maybe it’s too late; because what does it mean to make a promise to someone who has no obligations to you beyond sharing a memory? A strange memory at that; fleeting and ephemeral, of a time when you were hiding from your truth and she didn’t even know hers, after years trying to fit into the pictures everyone else had painted of the person they thought she should be. 

And maybe it’s because deep down inside, you didn’t reach out because you wanted her to reach out first. 

~~~

So here you are, ten years after you left the first time and two years after you left permanently, back in your childhood bedroom, back for a high school reunion you agreed to attend on a whim and staring at the huge painting hanging on the wall across from you. A huge painting that Aster painted. 

Incredible, what life throws at you when you let it. 

It knocks you backwards, even though you know you should have expected it. Paul has stayed close to her through the years and has even visited her studio a couple times. 

You would never admit your jealousy to him, but you know he knows that your feelings never went away, because you’re good at hiding things from most people but never from him. 

You can tell from the look on his face when you pull into the station for the first time in two years, because guilt looks weird on him and as soon as you call him out on it he reveals that he asked Aster to come to the reunion too. 

And so there it is. A couple years became a decade, but it’s finally time. 

Are you ready? 

You don’t know. 

But it’s too late to back out now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Been a couple years since I've written fic, but as a queer woman who took some time to figure things out myself, these two really inspired me. 
> 
> Also, "You're the Inspiration" is another great song by Chicago - if you haven't heard it before, I recommend checking it out! 
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


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